I've played a few practice runs and gotten roughed up pretty good learning the system. But now this is for real..........unless I get slaughtered in the first battle. I play iron man rules--Saving is for when you have too sleep and for the odd computer glitch. None of this getting a bad battle and then going back to a previous save. The downside is that I never actually finished the original XCOM even though I played it too death.

It might interest some that I have played for maybe 8 hours of game time and have found no problems or bugs. The game loaded quickly and there have been no crashes. My computer is, by the way, about three years old now and nearing the end of its gaming life. But I've had no crashes in 8 hours. The only problem was with the manual which would not load from the game screen. I had to restart the computer and then open the manual. Anyway I don't need no stinking manual!!!

My biggest problem so far has been remembering when to right click or left click. right click causes your trooper to turn, left click he moves to that location....or is it the other way?? I've gotten it wrong a few times and your careful advance is ruined by your soldier running across the battlefield when you only wanted him to turn around.

OK, I actually played the first month before I started this AAR. But I had to make sure I had a clue what I was doing. But anyway.

I started out building a lab and an interogation center. Can't spend too much or you'll run out of money before the end of the month trying to pay your people. I got my scientists working on the laser tech. Nothing to make with the engineers yet but it seems that if you don't use them you don't have to pay them which is nice.

Game starts on the 15th of Jan and by the 18th I sighted my first enemy craft. A scout. The interceptions are pretty cool and more fun then OX (original XCOM). The craft actually fight it out on screen and you can watch each bullet or missle go in. It's a little slower then in OX and it might get tiring after a while but for now its all good.

There are some tactics involved here as you can see where you are missing and the orientation of the ships (head-on, tail position, etc.) seems to matter. When the alien ship changes direction you'll see your missles all miss in the direction that the enemy was going to. I don't know what the optimal tactics are now though because I'm just a rookie. But I'm thinking about it.

Anyway I just put my two interceptors on aggressive attack and charged in. The scouts weapon is not that powerful and has a very slow rate of fire so there is nothing to worry about. But the battles are fairly protracted and I used maybe a third of my ammo before I got the kill. He hit me a couple times with his little green bolt and I think did 12 points of damage (120 needed to kill me).

And the good news is that he crashed over the land. So my troops are getting ready.

I went in with 8 soldiers. Now you can set how your troops are arranged in the transport which you could not do in OX. So I bought a rocket launcher for every soldierwho had strength greater then 40 which in my case was 4 troops. I put these guys up front along with my grenade man.

My grenade man came out of the transport and drew some fire. He was wounded but then threw grenades which were followed by rockets from my follow on troops. I killed one larve and one chaser on the first turn. On the second turn I threw more grenades and 3 more rockets while another soldier applied a stim pack to my grenade man. (He would take 3 damage each turn for the whole battle but the stim pack can keep you alive until they run out. I got a 2nd chaser on turn 2 and had successfully cleared the landing area.

Then the battle slowed down as I carefully manuevered my troops to try and locate the remaining enemy. One cool thing I noticed is that my troops leave footprints as they walk!! Do the enemy?? I don't know yet.

There was a large building on this map and one of my rockets had blown a hole in it. Once we got visual into the hole there was a larve in it which we blasted with a grenade and not much risk.

The building had an elevator and I had three of my troops preparing with dread to head up into it. But then on the other side of the map 2 chasers launched their final attack. They both just came charging out and ended up about 4 spaces from one of my rocket armed soldiers who was moving along the outside of the building. He was wounded slightly when the chasers shot at him and he had nowhere to run.

Worse, the chasers were between him and my other soldiers so we just had to shot it out. My trapped soldier threw a grenade which damaged one enemy (a rocket at range 4 is a little scary) My other two troops fired rifles and killed one of the enemy. But then I had only one soldiers left who could shoot and he had a rocket. So what could I do? I fired. The round missed of course and traveled on hitting the wall right next to my soldier. Down he went and he will spend 44 days in the hospital.

On the next turn this last enemy chaser advanced and was killed by a nice reaction shot and the game ended.

OK I'm caught up with my AAR. We went a long time without any enemy sightings. Finally on the 28th an enemy fighter appeared. I got my interceptors up but the fighter was moving fast 2400km/hr while mine have a top speed of 2200. I was winning the battle but then he just outran me.

You have to be a little careful about this. The fighter does not seem to be all that much stronger then the scout but its weapon does have a longer range then my cannons. So once it got out of my cannon range it could just shoot at me for free. So I had to break off and he got away.

And thats all the combat for the first month. I have researched laser tech and am now working on the medikit and the larve. My interogation room is complete and in 3 days I will get another lab. Plus I got paid. Note that my ground battle was fought in Medie which I guess appreciates my efforts.

After a long wait an enemy scout finally appears. I intercept it over Seathopia and manage to down it over land. It was a little dicey because the battle took place very near the coastline and the scout was moving at a good clip and changing directions a lot. But in the end it looks as if the aliens don't like crashing into the water and crash landed right on the coastline.

The 3 weeks without ground combat may prove handy as I now have researched and produced my first medikit. I hope I don't have to use it tonight but it never hurts to be prepared.

I went in with my tank this time and four troops. It started out well as a creeper was killed right off as his back was turned when we came off the transport. On the second turn a creeper charged in and fired 4 shots from 4 or 5 spaces. All missed!!!! The next turn I fired the whole store at him; 2 rockets a stun rocket until finally a grenade got him. They must be resisitant to blast. Still, two down with no loss and I had cleared the landing site.

Then those larve started shooting gas at me from long range. These guys are tough to deal with as they stand a long way off and are fairly accurate with their area effect gas weapon. I had a couple close calls but I killed three of them over a period of 10 turns but one of my guys succumbed to the gas. When you only have four men its tough to lose one.

So from then my 3 remaining troops took up safe overwatch positions and I used my tank to clear dark areas for a while. The maps are really big and this takes awhile. But then a creeper charged my tank and fired several shots killing it. Damm!!!

Two of my three soldiers were nearby and they finished him off with grenades. So I hoped that maybe I was almost done. My three soldiers tried to regroup the next turn but then disaster struck.

Two more creepers came charging in. My closest soldier fired two grenades from 5 or 6 spaces but both missed. From farther off I threw another desparation grenade but it also failed to destroy the enemy. My soldier was doomed and he died next turn.

Then they turned on my last two soldiers. To my horror I realized that we had nothing left. All our rockets had been fired and we threw our last grenades to no effect. We were down to pistols. I should have just run at this point but I just couldn't run. We stood and fought killing one of the creepers before my last soldier died.

We lost everything. The tank, the transport, and four soldiers. I can't see myself recovering from this. I have only two combat ready soldiers left.

I had hoped this would be an extended AAR but its not to be. Is anyone winning on normal level???? It seems incredably hard.

I'm yet to build a second base. My inital base has 3 workshops and 3 research centres. You need several things ASAP: laser rifle (not pistol, it's useless) but not heavy laser (too expensive) You also need to get to Beekeeper armour ASAP, and mind shield to guard against the Hallucinoids. Early on, use the HWP for scouting and luring the enemies to your troops. Don't use the HWP to fire! It doesn't gain experience. You really need to level up your troops, pronto. Put points into accuracy, time units and strength (up to 40 for Beekeeper) As soon as you can, ditch the HWP and use 8 troops instead. Research the alien craft bits and then sell them - you'll need the money.

Well I came back and started a new game on normal level after the recent patch. I've made it through the third month and seem to be doing fairly well.

My previous frustration seems to be caused by two things:

1.) In the old X-com I could go a lot of missions in a row without loss. When I did lose someone it was usually a rookie. So my Veterans could get lots of missions in. In this game you're going to get guys killed. A zero defect attitude is a sure recipe for frustration. But once I accepted that losses are inevitable I was OK.

2.) You can't visit every crash site. In old X-com I NEVER missed an opportunity for a fight. In this game there comes a point where you just don't have the troops to visit every site. So I just let some of them go. In March I must have sighted 15-20 UFO's and shot down most if not all of them. But with only 10 soldiers on my roster there was no way to fight 15 battles. So I only fought 3 or 4. I still got a monthly rating of excellent and my money went up.

If you get sick of that frustration install the latest version of my mod (4.01 right now, but 4.02 is due tonight). It lets you hire new soldiers as you need them. Which is good, since combat can be more difficult *and* you are likely to have 15-20 ufo sightings in a single week. Then there's the ufo swarms...

ive done this game on easy and had a great time.have used only vanilla so far .am playing through again on hard and wow its tough at times.I think this game is well worth playing it vanalla. when i finsh hard then i'm going to try out the highly tooted bmans mod.from what i read here and elsewhere it supposed to be great

and many thanks to bman654 for putting so much work into his mod. it'll be like getting a whole new game to play.